The world has changed overnight, and although many dealerships are now closed for onsite sales, many are looking for ways to optimize their remote retail strategies to reach customers online.

“The world has changed overnight, and although many dealerships are now closed for onsite sales, many are looking for ways to optimize their remote retail strategies to reach customers online, sell over the phone, and reconfigure their low-tech operations to adapt,” said Jim Maxim, Jr., chief executive officer for the dealership support company.

The DealerMax team of digital retail experts wrote the guide to give dealers an important sense of control and focus as the industry recognizes the urgency to move sales online where consumers increasingly feel more comfortable, safe, and empowered to shop and buy cars. They will prefer dealership’s offering processes that enable them single-source contact, especially in-store, to add layers of safety and comfort.

“In other words, there is a new roadmap to the sale. Meaning, selling cars remotely, and this guide helps dealers to better grasp several of the concrete steps they’re likely to find necessary on their path to successful online, remote car sales,” Maxim said.

To help dealers learn more immediately, DealerMax has developed a series of weekly webinars. Enriched content for each process change module are also being developed.

Maxim pioneered digital F&I in 2003 as chief executive officer for MaximTrak, which he sold to RouteOne in 2016, so he thoroughly understands the necessity of bringing different sets of customer engagement processes with technology to robust end-to-end online car sales.

“This change can be a hard choice for dealers who, before COVID, were convinced people still wanted to come in, look around, and touch a car, even if they didn’t buy,” Maxim said.

To best equip dealers to make these process changes, In addition, an immediately available download version, the DealerMax Dealership 2020 Guide: Re-engineering Automotive Retail (click to download) guide discusses:

How should you retool your people and reconfigure your customer experience?

What are the techniques, technologies, training needed for commerce during a crisis?

What are the critical decisions to make to business processes and sales workflow to transact?

How will your processes change as you limit your face-to-face time with your customers?

How can you position your dealership to not only survive the moment but to become more influential in a post-pandemic world?

RouteOne’s eSign Anything allows dealers to electronically send all eSignable deal documents through RouteOne’s secure signing portal to a customer and capture signatures in one signing ceremony; either remotely or in-store.